DON COSSACKS. 
their names being enumerated in a tone of 
voice and manner resembling that of a corporal 
or a serjeant at a roll-call. Passages were also 
read from the Psalms; but the method of 
reading, in Russian churches, cannot easily be 
described. The young priests who officiate, 
pride themselves upon mouthing it over with 
all possible expedition, so as to be unintelli- 
gible, even to the Russians; striving to give to 
a whole lesson the appearance of a single word 
of numberless syllables. Some notion may be 
formed of this bruiting, by hearing the crier in 
one of our courts of justice, when he administers 
the oath to a jury. 
The dinner given by the General, after this 
ceremony, served to prove, that among Cossacks, 
as elsewhere, religious abstinence by no means 
implies privation as to eating and drinking. We 
were taught to expect a meagre diet ; but we 
found the table covered with all sorts of fish, 
with tureens of sterlet soup, with the rich wines 
of the Don, and with copious goblets of deli- 
cious hydromel or mead, flavoured by juices of 
different fruits. We took this opportunity to 
request the General's permission to open one 
of the tumuli in the neighbourhood. It was 
granted, and an order was given for thirty of 
the Cossack soldiers to assist us in the under- 
vol. x. 2 a 
353 
CHAP. 
XIII. 
I — j 
Mode of 
Fasting. 
